[Taxacom] morphology in molecular phylogeny

[Maarten Christenhusz]

Dear all,

To continue the discussion about the destruction of evolutionary morphology in modern biology and systematics, I also think it is unbelievable that anyone can do taxonomy on a group solely based on molecular data, without taking the morphology into account. I would think that the samples used were identified by someone (who seldomly gets acknowledged for doing so correctly) using morphological characters (provided in keys or species descriptions). Many moleular people just believe the identification given with the specimen, without checking if these are correctly identified.
I also noticed that mostly when a phylogeny at the family level is attempted, the type genus is neglected, and these families have not always been tested for monophyly. This can be seen even more commonly at the generic level, where at least the type species of the genus should be included, before any taxonomic conclusions can be drawn.

Maarten Christenhusz
University of Turku, Finland